I Think I Got A Lemon

Hey Guys,

I think I got a Lemon Dev Alpha Device.

I picked up my dev alpha in toronto on thursday and plugged it in for 14 hours to find that the battery had not charged a single bit. After jiggling the cord around I finally got the device charging and got it up to 100%.

today the device went from 100% to completely dead in 8hr's and that's with about 20 min of use this morning and then having the device sitting on the counter with the screen off for the rest of the day.

I have also noticed that the touch screen goes completely unresponsive when the device starts and asks for the password. This has happened to me three times already.

And to wrap it all up I have noticed that there is something rattling around inside the device near the speaker.

I'm estimating that mine goes from fully charged to dead in about 10 hours on stand-by with no usage whatsoever (even with the Wi-Fi and NFC turned off). That's normal for this device. It appears to have no battery management. It's meant to be plugged in most of the time.

I've seen various reports of unresponsive touchscreens. On mine, I've mostly had trouble with the "A" key because it's too close to the edge, and it's hard to use with the rubber case. I don't think this is necessarily a hardware problem with your device.

The charging connector may be a problem that shouldn't be there. I've had no problem charging mine. I'm definitely concerned with something rattling around. I can confirm that nothing is loose inside mine. My concern would be that if the loose part is metal, it may short out the device at some point.

I'm not sure who you contact at RIM to get this resolved, but I would do it as soon as possible before they give all the devices away. The may be a limit to how long they can provide replacements. I would start by contacting the Developer Relations team.

Contact RIM Development and I'm sure they would fix you up. I've read only a couple of other posts about Dev Alphas having an issue and those individuals didn't seem to have any problems resolving them.

I'm sorry, but you are a dev in the dev program with RIM and you have no way to contact them!? This sounds slightly crazy, but maybe it's RIM's way of caring for devs, huh?

Actually I have found that the Developer Relations Team and most of rim staff to be quite helpful. There is not too many higher management people in other organizations that freely distribute there contact information like RIM does.

Actually we all got lemons, if you judge things that way (aside from the flaky charging connection, which could as well be pilot error).

The Alpha's battery absolutely does not last long, and as there's no sign of power management software being active on it (e.g. to slow down the CPU in standby), you shouldn't expect any better. I've had mine go from 100% to off in less than 6h sometimes.

This is expected (not by you maybe, but by RIM) and normal for the device and, seriously, should not be a problem to anyone who's using it for development. Leave it plugged in all the time and, if you go mobile for a while to test stuff out, you'll get more than enough time to do the job before it dies.

By the way, it doesn't even shut off properly sometimes, so to avoid the risk of serious damage to the battery, ALWAYS leave it plugged in when not in use or you'll find the thing has sucked the battery down to very low voltage levels where Lithium batteries are normally at risk of permanent damage (e.g. <3V).

If we were doing typical embedded development, this would be a Printed Circuit Board with wires hanging off of it, plugged into a bench power supply and with the screen hanging loose too. Consider it a huge gift that you've got a device that even has a case, let alone one with an actual battery. ;-)

I must remind everyone that these are Dev Alphas. They are designed to be tethered to a Dev's workstation most the day. Most Dev Alphas out there get about 4-6 hours of standby battery life. These aren't made to be taken on the go, on the road, loaded up with music, burning a cellular connection around the clock. They've been given out to test apps on something aside from the simulator. As peter9477 mentioned, the fact that these things have a battery and a chassy is amazing in its self.

As for my Dev Alphas, I see a total of about 2 hours of standby time from a fresh charge, mines probably less than other as I have a SIM card in mine. A reboot always has to consist of TWO reboots for me as the lock screen also locks up my user input, and it gets dangerously hot when a SIM card is inserted. Lemon? No. Dev Alpha? Yes. We should be happy we have anything at all.

Just be happy that when BB10 is launched, we'll all get new devices For now, I'm happy with my Dev Alpha... Makes waiting a bit easier.

I can confirm this, if you let the phone just sit on the login screen the touchscreen will freeze up and you'll have to reboot (good thing there is still a physical power button).
The battery really is a non issue as there is no reason (except showing off obviously :P) to take your dev device outside your office.

-Touchscreen becomes unresponsive at times and can only be fixed by a restart with the power button.
-buttons near the sides are extremely hard to press (q, a, z, etc)
-Battery doesn't last very long by itself.

Other issues I've experienced
-Activating the Keyboard shifts the screen down (of my webworks app) so there is a large grey bar at the top.
-I'm not sure if this is a software or hardware problem, but the accelerometer isn't working properly.
I was testing it out using the GitHub, and the accelerometer sample wasn't working properly. The ball wasn't falling with the screen tilt of the screen but doing something random on it's own.

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